Today’s Layout
A bit about me…
Ph.D. in Statistics from Montana State University
“Supporting Data-Intensive Environmental Science Research: Data Science Skills for Scientific Practitioners of Statistics”
Qualitative Research
“Qualitative researchers strive to understand the meaning people have constructed about their world and their experiences.” (Merriam 2002)
“Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there. This understanding is an end in itself.” (Patton 1990)
What are the principles of qualitative research?
The researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and data analysis
The analysis seeks to find emerging themes
The product of a qualitative study is richly descriptive
How might this look?
Sample Selection
Select a sample from which the most can be learned!
Data Collection
Major sources of data – interviews, observations, documents
Data Analysis
Compares units of data to find common patterns across the data
Investigating Student Learning through Code
Warm-up (90 seconds)
How would you describe the action(s) being taken in this statement?
A framework for analyzing student’s code
| Text Surface | Program Execution | Function | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Macrostructure | Understanding the overall structure of the program | Understanding the “algorithm” of the program | Understanding the goal / purpose of the program (in its context) |
| Relations | References between blocks, e.g., method calls, object creation | Sequence of method calls, object sequence diagrams | Understanding how sub-goals are related to goals, how function is achieved by subfunctions |
| Blocks | Regions of interest (ROI) that syntactically or semantically build a unit | Operation of a block, a method, or a ROI (as a sequence of statements) | Function of a block, may be seen as a sub-goal |
| Atoms | Language elements | Operation of a statement | Function of a statement, only understandable in context |
Coding student’s code
Descriptive Code
“Filters a vector of values using extraction operator, based on an equality relation with a variable selected from dataframe using
$operator”
In-vivo Code
“Uses
[ ]and==to filter vector, uses$to select variable”
How could this be used?
Why is this important for data science education?
How can we distinguish merely interesting learning from effective learning (Wiggins and McTighe 2005)?
Investigating Power in the Classroom
Another Warm-up 🙃
Choose one word that summarizes how you felt the last time you collaborated in a group.
“The more one talks and the less one listens, the more likely it is that one’s viewpoint will function as if it were community consensus even if it is not” (Montell 2019).
Gee perspective
Influence framework perspective
verbs for actions(Theobold and Williams 2022)
promotions / demotions
What can group work teach us about oral exams?(Theobold 2021)
Questions?